


You Needn't Think of Me

by stardust_made



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Het, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a practical reason to seek her out, but mostly it was another kind of need. She was there. There, in his life ‘before’ and maybe he was a little bit lost when he came to her, maybe he is a little bit desperate, but all he could think about was the three of them in Irene’s house, the three of them in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street. She was <i>there</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Needn't Think of Me

For a long time—for most of his adult life—Sherlock doesn’t care about love.

Then he meets Irene Adler and he doesn’t understand love. Nor himself, for that matter. Thankfully, he restores his balance quickly. He isn’t enlightened, no. Understanding continues to evade him, but he is content to leave it that way. He goes on with his life knowing that Irene Adler is somewhere out there, alive; that something happened between them; that something changed within him because of her. But just knowing all those things is enough. Sherlock has always reserved his close stare for potential crime scenes or things that can be put under a microscope. Besides, Jim Moriarty is also somewhere out there, alive, and that's far more engaging than any and all sentiment.

Until one day he realizes he got it all wrong. Firstly, Jim Moriarty being alive turns out to be all about sentiment for Sherlock. Then it seems like Sherlock's confusion about love was unnecessary. So was accepting his ignorance on the subject. He is still unable to put down what he feels in a formula or prove it like a theorem. But it’s there nonetheless: unmanageable, intangible, impossible to articulate. Love. Side by side with pain, like traces left on ice by the blades of a pair of skates.

The lines remain close, symmetrical, but there’s still a fall at the end.

What Sherlock really got wrong was thinking that meeting Irene Adler changed things. Things changed indeed—but it had been an earlier meeting that did it.

***

Sherlock doesn’t believe he can respond to physical stimulation at the moment. He doesn’t need to know much about psychology or medicine to figure out that the kind of single-mindedness with which he’s lived the last seven months was always going to take its toll with brutal force. Everything has been subsumed to his quest to finish Moriarty’s network. There are times when his focus and exertion send him into such a state that he can’t make a difference if it’s been eighteen months or eighteen days. Once it was closer to eighteen years, but he hadn't slept for fifty-six hours. His head alternates between being the only place in the world where some order and sense can be found and being an unbearable, arid territory. Recently, he has even started blurring the line between thoughts and emotions. (Mycroft laughed at his dragged-through-clenched-teeth confession, told him this was how normal people worked, then had the gall to pet him!)

As for his body…Sherlock’s body has become like a bag of sliced bread with only a few pieces left in it.

No, he doesn’t believe he can respond to physical stimulation at the moment.

Which is why finding himself respond to Irene Adler’s ministrations knocks out whatever semblance of self-possession he's managed to preserve.

At first, he doesn’t know why he lets her do that to him, do anything to him. Touch him. He suspects it is the result of exhaustion coupled with the effects of the two traces. Yes, there was a fall, but love and pain have gone on leaving their skid marks, uninterrupted. They brought him here, to Irene; there was a practical reason to seek her out, but mostly it was another kind of need. Sherlock is able to identify it, albeit roughly, and he knows Irene can’t meet it. But while she didn’t start this she was still instrumental in making him aware. Plus, she was there. There, in his life ‘before’ and maybe he was a little bit lost when he came to her, maybe he is a little bit desperate, but all he could think about was the three of them in Irene’s house, the three of them in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street. She was there.

“Shh,” she breathes against the shell of his ear and he knows he has whimpered. She continues her mystifying, obsequious dance over his flesh, kneading and brushing, pushing and pulling. Coaxing. His head trashes left to right, right to right. “Shh,” she repeats and he gasps, lifts his head and strains his neck to look down at the lower part of his body, to make sure, to see.

She was right, clever woman. “Everything is working just fine with you,” she said. “But I still can’t make it happen, unless you help me.”

“How?”

She looked at him with her piercing gaze and he was already sagging into the relief of letting go. Docile—no, not docile. Temporarily submitting to someone who, for all her games, wielded honesty like something precious. He swallowed and listened attentively.

“You needn’t think of me.”

Sherlock’s mind frayed at the edges. Then he dropped on his knees to both salute her and thank her. He was quite capable of recognizing sacrifice these days. He was also glad that his need meant her reward, too. He hadn’t forgotten her riveted pupils when she asked him, “Have you ever had anyone?” No. You can have me first.

She took it from there, kept him on his knees for a start, fingers digging into his curls exactly where Mycroft had petted them. Something else was similar, too: bending Sherlock. But where for once Mycroft hadn’t tried it, Irene did, literally. And Sherlock let her, throat exposing and lips parting in the process, the sight making Irene gasp and glow.

She said, “You needn’t think of me,” but she is still shimmering around him, the sheer power of her personality making it impossible for her presence to get dispersed. Sherlock doesn’t mind. She slips against his body, into him, against his fingers, onto them. It's a paradox but her slickness grounds him. He needs to be grounded. He is plummeting into a furnace of sensations. The lines are getting blurred again, but this time it’s not just between his mind and his emotions. Sensations merge with feelings. It's impossible to distinguish which is which: to feel pleasure means to feel love, to feel pleasure means to feel pain, and maybe Sherlock should let himself go sleepless and obsessed more often, because he chose wisely—who else understands so well how pleasure and pain can be one?

But he is growing frantic as well. He was wrong again. It won’t stop, this havoc over his singed nerves. It’s close to overwhelming him, oh, he did miscalculate. Sherlock was worried he wouldn’t be able to start, but now he is unable to stop. The sounds around him might be his, he might be sobbing in panic. She might be cooing again, but it’s not working. Louder, he begs, you don’t know what, how it is in my head, quiet won’t do it, not from you, you can’t do it, can’t do me, not with the quiet voice, the softest voice, it’s not your voice that I—

“That’s it,” she whispers, then disappears. He’s rolled onto his side. Something floats over his head, then covers it, bringing subdued light, close to blissful darkness—through his haze he sniffs and knows it’s her emerald green silk gown. Her fingers seem to squiggle over his skin everywhere, but then she’s pressing points on his lower back, on the soles of his feet, and he may love her as well, a little bit, for a moment, for making the rush ebb away. He feels cool dampness soothe his burning body and sighs, unfolds. He hears words murmured, clichéd words like beautiful and gorgeous, but it’s their speaker who has all the power, who imbues them with a weighty meaning. Sherlock knows praise. Correction—he’s learnt to know praise. The soft voice offered it—

The soft voice, the quiet voice, the shuffle of feet, the sound of paper folding, the silent stretch of lips, the lit up eyes, teeth maybe flashing even, but still quiet. He can be so quiet. He was so quiet, slipping into Sherlock’s life like grout applied so subtly, so well, until there was not a single crack of crevice left unfilled. Making the floors smooth and solid in anticipation of their wooden boards, making the walls waiting their wallpapers, making Sherlock’s entire inner space ready, wanting to be filled with things, places to sit, places to warm, places to think—wait. He had that. The sofa and the chair and the fireplace…

His eyes prick and he exhales, then feels a finger caress a droplet down his cheekbone. Her hand and mouth return to him again, but this time he is somewhere else. He needn’t think of her and he doesn’t. He doesn’t think at all. The trickle of associations and images swiftly transforms into a stream, then into a waterfall. Sherlock crashes down with it, wrecked and ecstatic, tries to simultaneously gulp some air and understand, but at the end breathing wins.

***

He sleeps for twelve hours. When he wakes up there’s a lot of good food waiting for him as well as a new shirt and a new suit, both of which fit him perfectly. Black on charcoal black. Yes, she was there.

“Why do I feel like I should pay you?” Sherlock asks, his voice restored to its levelled tone, yet just a hint lower. Irene’s eyes widen in amusement and he chews on his bottom lip, wondering if he said something wrong.

“Because I’m that good,” she replies, each word served like it’s a seduction masterpiece. “You don’t have to pay me. It was pure fun, no business.”

“I know that,” he says quickly.

She raises an eyebrow. There’s certain slackness in her fine shoulders and in the lines around her mouth. It occurs to Sherlock that she probably had an orgasm as well. His recollection of what took place between them isn't great. His body's informed him readily about some of the proceedings, what with the soreness and the sharpened vision and the heightened sense of smell. There’s lightness in his groin accompanied by a pleasant hum. Sherlock feels like he used to feel after riding. The irony is not lost on him; the right corner of his lips quirks as he looks pointedly at Irene.

She raises her other eyebrow, casting a slanted look at his mouth that makes him remember how she kissed him, thorough, I want this for myself-intent. He squints, ready to start picking apart and collecting evidence of what else, but it’s all out of habit. He abandons it. He doesn’t really need to know the details.

Sadness begins to cloud her eyes as they skim down the planes of his chest. Her fingers rest on his trousers’ waistband, more precisely over the hidden clasp at the front. No belt, that's how he prefers it. What she’s selected for him fits so snugly there isn’t any need for one.

“This here…” Her voice is unadulterated want. Interesting. Sherlock seems to be able to pick up on it.

Her hand splays to cover the area, warming his belly button. A deft hand with the softest, roundest tips of the nails. Sherlock abruptly remembers another detail: she was very thorough in de-manicuring her hand before they started.

She lifts her gaze and whatever complicatedness Sherlock finds in it, he leaves it to her.

Her touch withdraws with tamed reluctance.

“If you ever need to repeat the experience, you know how to find me. Although I doubt I’ll have the pleasure again.” The words are carefree; her look, however, is searching. He frowns but has nothing to say. She waits, then nods to herself and taps his chest lightly. “Off you go now. Not long left and it’ll be quicker from now on.”

“Why would it be quicker?”

“Because it’ll take you less time.”

She laughs at the deepening line between his eyebrows. “Now you’ll be deadlier, darling, because you’re in…better form.” It sounds like she’s spelling things out for him, and Sherlock realizes he doesn’t mind that she thinks he’s an idiot, just like he doesn’t mind when John does.

John.

“Thank you,” he says, and leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> Original entry [over here](http://stardust-made.livejournal.com/68165.html) at my LJ.


End file.
